Warmly agreed - but documentation strongly suggests Purcell sang "Tis Nature's Voice" himself (and was not allowed to continue with the rest of the Ode until he'd encored it!)...  and he was simultaneously a bass?  English cathedrals still have quite a few versatile performers of this kind - employed to do one thing, but ready and able to pitch-in as the other as need demands. I know 2-3 singers of this type myself.  If you have a look at Purcell's Catches (many of which have texts which are either amusingly controversial or openly obscene, and which thus rarely get performed) they're not vocally negotiable without a gear-change into falsetto at some point - and this was considered absolutely normal at the time.  The Catches are typically for three performers, and it's usually on the third sections (ie once a "bass-line" has been established by the opening phrase) that the falsetto opens-up at the end.  "To all Lovers of Musick, both singers and scrapers" is a fairly good example  (which is the Preface to one of the Glee collections published by John Parr, presented set to music) of this.

I think the situation with falsettists in England (I exclude Scotland here, Ron!) was a bit different from what was going on across the Channel, and remained so long after Purcell's time.  So as not to disappoint you Ollie  ,  I'll cite Britain's most-shamefully-neglected composer, Stephen Storace...  all of his operas feature baritone characters whose arias are intentionally written to include falsetto sections.  (The performers of these were Bannister, Dignum and Suett - it was a whole tradition, not an isolated "freak" case). At the risk of repeating what I've said before, the "tenor" thing in British opera only emerged when Mick Kelly returned from Italy, and hit a full-voiced top-Bb in "Spirit Of My Sainted Sire" (HAUNTED TOWER) - a sensation which "caused the ladies to feint in admiration", and which hadn't been heard in British opera before.  (We can rely not only on Kelly's garrulous "Musical Reminscences" for backup on this, but also the charming and more musically-informative "Memoirs" of oboist Nathaniel Parke, who clearly idolised Storace and the Italian traditions he brought back from Lugarno and Vienna, and had scant regard for his own employer, William Shield at the Covent Garden Playhouse.  His twin brother was Storace's oboist).  Although Kelly took the "romantic leads" for this 10-year flowering of "Viennese" writing in Britain, performers like Dignum (who always played "loyal and patriotic burgher" roles), Bannister (who was the Shakespearian dramatic lead at Drury Lane, who happened to be able to sing in opera too) and notably Richard "Dicky" Suett (the "John Cleese" of his age) all had huge fan-club followings.  Suett had whole comic operas (MY GRANDMOTHER) written for his abilities in this baritone-falsettist repertoire (sadly the libretto of MY GRANDMOTHER is lost, although the music, including "Dicky's Walk", survives).

Sadly this whole "baritones-who-can-sing-well-in-falsetto" presents another barrier (although not an insuperable one) to getting Storace's work back on stage...  along with the difficulties of finding a coloratura boy-treble to sing "Master Welsh's" roles, and a luxury cast of coloratura sopranos to sing the "Sigra Storace", "Miss Ellis" and "Mrs Crouch" roles

Memo to self - stage one of Storace's pieces next season and finally get a recording of his operatic music onto YouTube at least...

I should repeat that the existence of all these excellent counter-tenors is something I'm perfectly happy about, 'authentic' or not. I suspect the falsetto singing Reiner's talking about is the sort where falsetto is used to add some range at the top of what is otherwise a baritone voice - counter-tenors on the other hand pride themselves on having a particularly sumptuous low falsetto, or at least on carrying the falsetto colour down into the leger lines.

I'm not sure about the stories of Purcell singing 'Tis Nature's Voice (I think we discussed that at TOP) - I understand that that sprang from a report of the event ('Motteux' in The Gentleman's Journal) which mentioned that it was 'performed twice with universal applause, particularly the second stanza, which was sung with incredible graces by Mr Purcell himself', meaning most likely that the graces (or the ornamentation) were written out (which of course they are) rather than improvised by the singer (who according to Purcell's score was a certain John Pate, who also appeared in The Fairy Queen). I don't think Purcell is known as having been a soloist; if that story had been true in the traditional interpretation I find it hard to believe he wouldn't have found himself doing the odd gig from time to time...

Ollie, I cling to that belief in Purcell having sung it himself largely because I read it in a programme-note...  but then I remember that I actually wrote the programme-note, so the argument becomes a bit circular.  I think I originally found this in the very comprehensive annotations in the score of the piece when we did it in 2005, where the editor had read that bit of text the way I had?  But considering that Purcell had followed his uncle into the Westminster Abbey choir (as a bass-man) before becoming organist, I don't think it's entirely impossible that he couldn't have sung his own solos?  (Perhaps it was also "useful" for his career to be seen doing so on occasion?).   I made the obtuse music of having lent the score to a conductor (and of course there is more chance of getting a score back from a shredder than from a conductor) so I don't have it on hand to refer to.  I think I have the vocal score at home, but I doubt it has the abundance of annotations the full score does.

Mick Kelly did sing in London at a very early age* indeed, but I don't think he had any opera roles... he was packed off to Italy to learn to sing "properly", which was where he bumped into the Storaces accidently, at Lugarno, on the sea-front. Apparently he was joking with acquaintances and speculating in English whether the "creature" with the young man across the street was male or female, and was surprised to get an extremely tart reply from La Storace in English, to the effect that "the creature, Sir, is a she-animal".  From memory I think his entire early career was in Italy and Austria?  But I've recently managed to get a fresh copy of his Reminiscences, so I can check?  One of his most famous early roles was Don Curzio in the premiere of FIGARO, into which he introduced a "comical stammer", he tells us. (Nancy Storace sang Susanna).  But he sang almost everything offered to him in Vienna, including lots of Salieri, Martin Y Soler, Cimarosa, and much else...  what role were you thinking of? 

* his Reminscences note that his desire to become a singer was motivated in his youth in London, when he'd just arrived from Ireland, by singing a succesful performer sit down in the shop-window of a fruit-shop in mid-summer, and proceed to devour oranges, slices of melon, "and finally a pine-apple, at which point I could bear to look no longer, and resolved to take more seriously to my vocal studies in the hope of one day having a pine-apple of my own".

Quite right! I'd forgotten he'd sung both.

I can only speak from my own experience of preparing Cardew and Wolff here (and not those works that you've mentioned). The questions came up in discussion with the other performers but we agreed that it was more interesting and useful to approach the scores afresh, mainly because of the way that I feel the 'happening-like' interpretations can sometimes obscure the actual music (and it tends to encourage rogue elements within the group...)

No. I've avoided it when I can. I don't think that these pieces always have identities that are well established enough to 'need' HIP (and there's a debate to be had about whether Cage's performances of his own works were always as 'authentic to the text' as his writings would suggest was intrinsic to the very identity of the piece) - perhaps this is something to do with the notational issues - when everything's notated, there's some kind of identity on the page that doesn't exist when the notation is graphic or text... maybe.
Trevor Wishart offered help with my realisation of Cardew, but I preferred to work on the interpretation myself. Having done that, I'd be interested to work with him now.

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Here is what Adam Fischer, director of the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, writes about

Haydn with modern instruments?


Priceless, eh? Please give this to your 13-year-old son/daughter to pick apart the logic. Good exercise, for a teenager!

(I do like these recordings, though, of the Paris symphonies.)

Isn't that last paragraph a rather bungled version of what Adorno has to say on the matter (he says casually despite having never read more than a chapter of said author)? I seem to remember Max Paddison saying something to that effect (though a very much more length and depth and breadth and length and length).